The invention relates to a pharmaceutical automation system. More particularly, the present invention relates to an automatic medication dispensing and packaging system realizing increase of tablet cassette capacity in a limited machine space while facilitating tablet debris or dust cleaning.
An automatic tablet dispensing and packaging system is generally provided with a tablet packaging portion and a tablet dropping portion placed above the packaging portion. The tablet dropping portion includes a plurality of tablet cassettes containing different sets of tablets. Korean Utility Model No. 2002-5029 discloses a plurality of sliding cabinets having tablet cassettes to slidably pull out the sliding cabinets for cassette replacements or tablet refill-in the cassettes to accommodate 300 or more tablet cassettes. Korean Patent Application No. 1986-2173 discloses tablet cassette array in a horizontal alignment in a shelf construction. Korean Patent Application No. 1990-12411 discloses polar array of tablet cassettes in a vertical alignment.
Such prior arts, however, each require an elongate hopper to guide the tablets released from the cassettes down to the packaging unit. It is disadvantageous since horizontally elongate hoppers hold the tablets released thereon for a longer period of time and thus result in delay of tablet packaging time in the packaging unit.
Further, the conventional cassette array requires a higher system side walls and causes the hopper to be raised, thereby deteriorating space efficiency. Especially, if the hopper is raised to meet the conventional cassette construction, the tablets have to roll or bounce in the hopper for a longer period of time thereby generating tablet debris and dust, which may lead to increase of danger factors because even a slight amount of the tablet debris if mixed with another prescription may cause a negative medical affect on patients. The conventional tablet cassette cabinets make it also difficult to cleaning and maintenance of the system parts and demands more time for cassette attachments and replacements.